


Literally Anything

by murderofonerose (atmilliways)



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Pre-Canon, Pre-Klok, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-07 01:13:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18400115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose
Summary: Nathan and Skwisgaar are broke as hell and sharing a one bedroom apartment while waiting for their new band, Dethklok, to take off. They are both allergic to housework through, so the apartment is a hole.Cue the weird but nice homeless kid who's willing to clean their place in exchange for food, cans and bottles to recycle, and access to their shower.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [little_murmaider](https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_murmaider/gifts).



> The original prompt was “LITERALLY ANYTHING.” I forget who sent me the prompt, because my only notes on it are, "Could be about what they stick their you know whats intosides of, could be something somebody yells, could be, in fact, literally anything. _Be ready._ "

Nathan sat at the head of the table and surveyed his domain. Of course, the table was a crappy folding one and said domain was a shithole one bedroom apartment, but it was the thought that counted. “Okay, uh... I hearby call this house meeting to order.”

From the other side of the little table, Skwisgaar stared back at him with a thoroughly disinterested expression and took a sip of his beer. He wasn’t even wearing a shirt, and was only in the kitchen to drink his breakfast. “What meetinks? We ams the only two what lives here.”

This was duly ignored, as usual. Nathan was basing this heavily on the ‘family meetings’ of his youth, which he’d always suffered through with poor grace at the time, so it was to be expected. “I found someone to clean the apartment,” he announced. “Some homeless kid agreed to do it as long as he can use our shower and take our empty beer cans and shit to recycle for money.”

“You can does that? Why don’t we does that?”

“Plus he said he’ll eat anything,” Nathan continued, “so I figure that’s cheaper than getting the kitchen pig fixed.”

Skwisgaar took another pull from his beer. “Ah, ja, good values for no money right theres, fuckings sink-plumbers want to charge an arm ands legs... What’s dis guy is names again?”

“I dunno, Hokey Dokie or something.” Nathan shrugged. “He’ll be here tomorrow. I didn’t give him a key or anything, so... yeah. You’ll have to let him in. Anyway, enough of the boring shit. How’s the new song coming? You figure out those riffs yet? Magnus keeps texting that he’s got something, you gotta get on that before we, uh, have to give him writers credit or something.”

“He am shits at music,” the blonde sneered dismissively. “It ams cominks alongs. Might need you’s inputs on it befores you go to works, if you knows what I’m means.”

“Hnn.” Nathan squinted at the clock built into the stovetop and scratched idly at the side of his face. “I guess I have time.” He stood and stretched. Unlike Skwisgaar, he had bothered to put a shirt on for his afternoon lounge around the house before he went to his shift at the nearby Dimmu Burger. He had neglected pants, however, and his tighty whities left little to the imagination. 

Skwisgaar had already seen everything the bigger man had to offer and didn’t have to imagine. Still, his eyes zeroed in on it and he quickly downed the rest of his beer. 

Once, Nathan had compared him to a ketchup bottle: sometimes you had to bang on it, but if you did that hard enough it got the good stuff to come out a lot faster. 

 

* * *

 

There wasn’t a lot they devoted money to on a regular basis. Booze and drugs, one thing to splurge on. Guitar strings and equipment for gigs, that was another category. 

But after those, the coveted title of third most important was definitely online porn. It was cheaper than things like dates, condoms, and bus fare to the local free clinic to deal with another burning sensation. Most sites didn’t even charge you, which was amazing. Skwisgaar was quite sure that without easily accessible porn, he would have died within six days of setting foot in this country and its godforsaken Florida humidity. 

He was attending to such needs when he gradually became aware of a persistent knocking at the front door. At first, he ignored it. When it failed to stop and he remembered that Nathan was at work, Skwisgaar groaned, groped around for some clothes to throw on, and grudgingly went to see who it was. He padded amidst the stacks of crusty dishes, discarded fast food wrappers, and piles of dirty clothes, grudgingly adjusting his sweatpants for the sake of decency in case it was the landlord coming for rent again. Jackoff kept saying that if Skwisgaar flashed him one more time...

In fact, it was a fresh-faced young man in grubby t-shirt and jeans. His hair was too long to be short and too short to be long, and he wore a silly blue hat. They blinked at each other, and then the young man said hopefully in halting English, “Um, helloes! I... am comes to... clean apart-mints for Nathans?”

“Oh,” Skwisgaar said, remembering the previous day’s ‘apartment meeting,’ and yawned. “Ja, Nathan lives here, he said to expect yous.” He pushed the door open wider. “You gots a names?”

“Mitt navn?” the boy asked uncertainly as he stepped inside. “Um, I ams who you calls Toki... um, Smiths. I am nots a runaways from Norge if you ams wondering,” he added with a forced laugh. 

“... Sures,” Skwisgaar said disinterestedly. He himself had been a runaway from Sverige several years ago, so he felt no reason either to judge or care about the incredibly transparent lie — just closed the front door and started to head back to what he’d been doing before the interruption. “Welcomes to the shits-hole. Just do whatever you cans, and don’t bother stealing shits ‘cause amn’ts nothing worths it to steal. Check ins de kittens cattenbets for stuff to cleans with, from the last guy whats live here befores us.”

With that, Skwisgaar slunk back down the hall and shut himself in the bedroom, which incidentally was where they stored their only valuables (aka guitar stuff and sound equipment) between practices. 

 

* * *

 

Some time later, Skwisgaar woke up from a sated doze. He had a vague recollection of hearing a door open and close somewhere. His eyes went to the bedroom door, but it still had the desk chair jammed under the knob — standard masturbation procedure ever since the lock on it had broken. 

Through the wall, he heard the rumble of the bathroom pipes as the shower was turned on. 

Nathan must be home. Skwisgaar stretched and yawned, flexing on the bed until every limb had been extended fully at least twice. He rolled out of bed, which didn’t require much effort because the mattress was both frameless and on the floor, and stood. Barefoot and casually naked, he unwedged the chair and swung the door open, only to pause in disbelief. 

The living room was immaculate. All the piles had vanished, though on closer inspection all the discarded articles of clothing appeared to have been washed, sorted, and folded neatly on the couch according to function, size, and color. The floor was... visible, for one thing, and Skwisgaar could’ve sworn that the carpet had always been some sort of abstract, patchy pattern but now it was a more or less uniform tan-ish brown. Even the window panes had been wiped down and the curtains hung back up. 

When had they ever had curtains?

Skwisgaar wandered out, amazed. As he drew closer he realized that the ‘curtains’ had been made out of an old sheet that they’d meant to throw out months ago because it had started to fray — it had been patched and hemmed. Everything had a clean, vaguely bleach-y smell to it. And the kitchen was similarly clean, with the addition of all the linoleum and metal having been buffed to a brilliant shine. 

After a moment of standing with his hands on his hips and surveying everything, Skwisgaar turned turned towards the bathroom. 

“Uh, Nathans? Dids you see whats I can sees rights now, or...” He pushed the bathroom door (lock also busted) open. The rest of the sentence was supposed to be or dids you sleekwalps rights past it, because Tuesdays were long shift and Nathan could get pretty spaced after a ten hour day. But instead of peering through the gathering steam and transparent shower curtain at Nathan’s muscular, football player’s frame, he saw long-ish short-ish brown hair and chiseled abs. 

Toki shrieked and turned to shield himself as best he could, which wasn’t much. He had a nicely sculpted ass, Skwisgaar noticed. A little scrawny, but Nathan had said the kid was homeless, right? Probably didn’t eat very well. A few square meals a day for a while and he’d be a real treat. 

“Oh. Sorries.” Skwisgaar, who had outgrown modesty a long time ago, leaned casually against the doorframe without regard for his own nakedness. “How the hell longs was I asleeps for you to cleans everysthing out likes that?”

“I, ums,” the young man stammered, his face red as he glanced over his shoulder and then quickly away. “I throws out, uh, thems trash-garbage outsides. I gots in the black bags all... bottles and... metal bottles... for whats to re-sigh-call. Um, washed clothes with soaps. Gots all cleans for you!”

Skwisgaar eyed him as he translated and rearranged the words in his head. Trash in the dumpster, recyclables sorted and bagged to redeem for money or whatever, and Toki had obviously found the laundry room in the apartment building’s basement. All in a few hours, which was... freakishly efficient, and he was being pathetically eager to please about it. Skwisgaar had a lot of types (a lot), but that was absolutely one of them. 

“I sees,” he said with a smile. “Well, all thats lookings good to mine eye. Enjoy dat shower, you orns it. And maybes... you hangs around afters? Takes a load offs, eats some foods, we cans—” Skwisgaar let a hand travel to one hip and his eyes take an obvious visual voyage over the other man’s body. “—talks a whiles?”

Toki’s face reddened even further, confirming Skwisgaar’s suspicion that he knew body language and tone better than the spoken words, but he seemed hypnotized rather than put off. “Ja, um... Ja, selvfølgelig,” he mumbled, self-consciously pushing wet hair out of his face. It was Norwegian, and with kind of a weird, backwoods twang to it, but it wasn’t any more confusing than his English. 

Skwisgaar gave him a suggestive wink and simply said “Vi ses då” before closing the bathroom door. Let him think about that for the rest of the shower, and by the time he was towlines off he’d be putty in the guitarist’s extremely talented hands. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was sponsored by this fun fact I read on the internet: 
> 
> If your mattress is on the floor rather than up on a frame, there's no way for air to circulate underneath. This is a problem because mattresses soak up moisture (night sweat, drool, whatever). If there's no air flow, it can't dry out properly and will eventually mold.

It had been three weeks since Toki had started coming by to clean the apartment, and life was a little different. Nathan hadn’t been particularly pleased to come home one afternoon to find that the mattress he and Skwisgaar shared was spotlessly clean but, as a trade off, smelled of bleach and was still a bit damp. But the questionable mold in the fridge had been cleared up and they were saving money on their electricity bill now that the windows weren’t too grubby to let in light during the day and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slipped on soap scum in the shower. They might even be able to afford a proper bed frame any day now. Overall, the changes were probably for the better. 

So he was surprised to wake up on his day off and realize that not only was Skwisgaar up and fully dressed in his trademark white sleeveless shirt and white jeans, but the Swede actually had his guitar with him as if prepared to go out busking. 

“The fuck?” he grunted half into his pillow. 

Skwisgaar paused in getting his boots on. “Whats?”

Nathan grimaced at the peevish note in the other man’s tone. He’d been looking forward to hanging out together, maybe watch football and try to explain the rules again over a case of beers, but not if Miss Swedish Drama Queen USA was going to put in an appearance. 

“... I thought you, uh, hated playing in public without real amps.” They had a mini one, but it couldn’t be cranked up loud enough to really count. 

Skwisgaar snorted. “Ja, I does. But I hates being stuck ins dis place when a guy whats does all the cleaninks but _don’t puts out_ ams here. Can’t even speaks shits-for-nothings Enklish for fucks sake.”

Nathan woke up a little more, or enough to roll his eyes at least. “ _You’re_ ragging on the kid’s English? That’s rich.” He blinked. “Uh, wait, since when are you trying to sleep with Toki?” 

“Ain’t no sleekpings abouts it,” the Swede groused, returning to his struggle of boot versus foot. “Fucks, I ams so boreds here. Whens did dat glasses and ties guy says he gets us a real gig soon? It amn’ts a band’s if all we ever does is prackstits and no one never hears us _plays_.”

There was no use pointing out that he would be less bored if he got a damn job to help pay rent, so Nathan didn’t. Skwisgaar’s spoken English was so bad that no one wanted to hire him — even at places like Dimmu Burger where the bar was really, _really_  low — and it was still unclear if he could read anything besides sheet music, guitar tabs, and fast food dollar menus. 

“Alright, whatever,” Nathan grunted, rolling over to go back to sleep. “If someone throws any condoms in your case, save some for me this time.”

He was up and relatively more alert by the time there was a tentative knock at the front door. Heaving himself up off the couch and away from his beer to answer it was annoying — maybe it was time to just give the kid a key already, let him come and go as needed. After all, the apartment was fucking spotless and nothing had ever been stolen, not even shitty old clothes that they never wore anymore. The occasional spoon went missing, but that had been going on long before Toki had started coming by and, anyway, it was always around times when Pickles and Magnus had been in the apartment. Could be either of them. 

Nathan opened the door. “Hey man, come on, uhhhhhhhh... in?”

He squinted and leaned forward. Toki, who ducked his head in a paltry attempt to avoid the inspection, looked like he’d just had his ass handed to him. A bruised cheek, one eye starting to swell shut, lip split, clothes scuffed and torn told a pretty clear story. Maybe some of the wounds on his arms didn’t necessarily look all that defensive... but Nathan wasn’t an expert or anything, just watched a lot of crime shows and shit. And it wasn’t really any of his business anyway. He held the door further open with a grunt of half annoyance, half trying to put as much distance between himself and looking like he cared as possible. 

“Takk, Nathans,” Toki mumbled, and meekly limped inside. 

“Yeah whatever. We’ve got a first aid kit around somewhere, uhhh...” He swing the door shut and scratched his head, unable to remember where he’d last seen the thing. They _did_ have one, right? “...You seen it around anywhere? White box with a red plus sign on it?”

“Ja, I has,” Toki mumbled, and headed for the kitchen. 

Nathan was torn. He didn’t want to care, but he was curious to know what the hell had happened. Come to think of it, they didn’t know that much about Toki. He could usually be spotted begging for spare change outside the Dimmu Burger or the Duncan Hills across the street, maybe in the park between there and the apartment if the weather wasn’t shitty. Clearly homeless, but Nathan had never seen him in a sleeping bag or pile of blankets or grungy tent like the other bums. Where did he even sleep?

Since it was more interesting than watching another Law & Order rerun, he snagged his beer to finish the last couple swigs of it and wandered towards the kitchen. He walked in on Toki applying bandages to scrapes that were too big to fit under a standard bandaid. “Uh. You’re doing that wrong, y’know.”

Toki tried to reposition the bandage, and whimpered slightly when the adhesive tugged painfully on a cut. 

“ _God_.” Nathan thumped his own empty beer bottle down on the table, sat, and dragged the first aid kit closer. “Get over here, I’ll do it. Don’t you know what gauze is for?”

“My parents don’t believes in its,” Toki mumbled. 

“That’s fucking stupid,” Nathan told him bluntly. “How do you not believe in shit that’s right there?” He gestured impatiently with the roll of gauze. “Fucking sit already.”

Reluctantly but obediently, he sat in the other kitchen chair and let Nathan clean and bandage the wounds. Nathan had, over the course of his football career and in schoolyard fights from kindergarten through the year he’d dropped out of high school, developed a pretty thorough understanding of basic first aid. Partly to keep his mom from fussing over him, he explained as he worked. He was rambling, really, but Toki seemed to hang on every word so he just kept going. 

“... And the best thing for a black eye is to put a steak on it,” he was saying as he finished getting some of the dried blood off Toki’s face. 

“Steaks?” Toki repeated doubtfully. 

“Yeah, a raw steak. That’s what my dad always had me do... and then when I was done using it he’d grill us all steaks for dinner, heh.” Nathan got up and went over to the fridge, swigging the freezer door open. “Course, we can’t fucking afford steak, so we don’t have any. Here, use this.” 

As he tossed the bag of frozen peas, Nathan’s eye caught the clock. The game would be on soon. 

Toki caught the peas and pressed the bag gingerly against his swollen eye. He looked pretty pathetic with that split lip and twelve ounces of store brand vegetables pressed to his face. Not that Nathan cared, of course... but it had been a pretty boring day so far, and it would be kind of cool to have someone to watch the game with. 

“Hey, uh, do you like football?”

Toki gave him a blank look. “What ams foot-balls?”

“It’s fucking _awesome_ , that’s what it is.” Grinning, Nathan snagged a fresh six pack from the fridge and dragged the startled kid into the living room. “Come on, I’ll explain the rules!”


End file.
